He told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show: “What I want to do is makes sure we’re using everything I have available to deal with the housing crisis.

"Where that means, for example, we can sensibly borrow more to invest in the infrastructure that leads to more housing, take advantage of some of the record low interest rates that we have, I think we should absolutely be considering that...

“We have to continue to be bold in this area – we set out some measures during the conference but there is a lot more to do.

"This is one of the biggest barriers to social progress in this country.”

Sources have since revealed that the figure Mr Javid has asked for in the Budget next month is £50bn.

The Communities Secretary also acknowledged in yesterday’s interview that the UK requires between 275,000 and 300,000 new homes, of a range of tenures, to be built every year.

Mr Hammond will deliver his Budget next month, amid speculation that he will announce sweeping changes to the planning system and put pressure on housing developers to build.

Watch Sajid Javid tell Andrew Marr that the Government could borrow more to solve the housing crisis here:

Contributions from readers

Craig Mackay

10:16 on 23rd October 2017

Sajid Javid is absolutely right. We must build more houses and the only way to do that is to start by giving local authorities the right to raise money by issuing bonds themselves. However we have to be clear about what is the main problem today. There isn't really any shortage of land that has already been approved for building. A year ago there were over 600,000 homes already approved but not started. There have been over 300,000 planning approvals in the last year.
Money, it turns out, is not really the main problem. It is important but there are other serious limitations to what we can do. There is principally a lack of Labour and a lack of materials. The only way we can manage this is by importing from Scandinavia/Germany modular building techniques which are very popular there. Without that I cannot see any prospect of producing large numbers of affordable housing. You can read more about it here: http://outsidethebubble.net/2017/06/22/solving-the-housing-crisis-a-fairer-deal-for-all/